Saturday, November 28, 2015

This very odd series of photos is from the Library of Congress's stereograph collection. I can't help thinking that when they were made (1906) they must have been thought of as impossibly salacious if not downright obscene. Who was the audience for these?

Thursday, November 26, 2015

The Forrest Hall broke up in the heavy waves and most of her
cargo was unable to be salvaged. The shipwreck occurred in controversial
circumstances, with the ship running directly on to the beach in broad
daylight. A subsequent commission of inquiry raised issues of
drunkenness and insurance fraud, but ultimately found the captain guilty
of gross negligence.

Sunday, November 22, 2015

Mr. Prokudin-Gorskii was a pioneering Russian photographer whose experiments with color were way ahead of his time and gave amazing results, as you can see from these. The Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii Collection
features color photographic surveys of the vast Russian
Empire made between ca. 1905 and 1915. Frequent subjects
among the 2,607 distinct images include people, religious
architecture, historic sites, industry and agriculture,
public works construction, scenes along water and railway
transportation routes, and views of villages and cities. An
active photographer and scientist, Prokudin-Gorskii
(1863-1944) undertook most of his ambitious color
documentary project from 1909 to 1915.